Thursday, October 8, 2009

Statement from MVFHR and NAMI on World Days

Statement on World Day Against the Death Penaltyand World Mental Health DayOctober 10, 2009

The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty has designated October 10th “World DayAgainst the Death Penalty,” and the World Federation for Mental Health has designatedOctober 10th “World Mental Health Day.” Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rightsand the National Alliance on Mental Illness have taken the occasion of these two interesting“World Days” to issue the following statement:

Today is a day of two calls to action: a call to end the death penalty and a call tomake mental health treatment a global priority. As organizations who havecome together to form the “Prevention, Not Execution” project, we bringthese two calls together and declare that it is time to end the death penalty forpeople with mental illness.

This past year, Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights and the NationalAlliance on Mental Illness released a report called Double Tragedies: Victims SpeakOut Against the Death Penalty for People with Severe Mental Illness, giving voice tofamilies throughout the United States whose lives have been forever changedby the intersection of murder, mental illness, and the death penalty. Twomonths later, Amnesty International issued a report titled Hanging by a thread:mental health and the death penalty in Japan, highlighting the Japanese government’scontinued executions of mentally ill prisoners.

The death penalty is inappropriate for people with severe mental disorders. Onthis day of two intersecting worldwide calls for change, we urge prevention ofviolence, through effective and accessible mental health treatment, rather thanexecutions.

4 comments:

I disagree 100%!!!! People with severe mental disorders know they have severe mental disorders. 9 times out of 10, they choose to go off of their medications for whatever reasons. Additionally, these people are also extremely conniving. They use their mental illnesses for gain. For instance...a woman is on disability for a mental disorder. The woman tells her children to tell their father they "never want to see him again". The father moves for custody change. Woman begins to state she's not so mentally ill that she can't raise her children properly, but she is so mentally ill that she can't hold a job, and father should provide full support for children. Additionally, these people manipulate the system, they harrass people in general, they can't maintain proper relationships with other adults, and they refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions, and those with children, attempt to make them mentally ill as well. People with mental illnesses (based on my experience) are so highly manipulating and frightening that they are able to garner sympothy for the illnesses so that they can comit crimes with less than the expected consequences. Mentally ill people appear to be quite happy being mentally ill. They can live on disability for it, they can comit reprehensible acts, then use their mental illness as a justification for them, and they can refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions. Only after a mentally ill person comits a crime do they want to acknowledge that they are severely mentally ill, use that mental illness as a defense, and only after that are they seeking treatment in the proper facility, but only IF it's in exchange for prison time. Nope sorry, I've been the victim of people with mental illness far too often, for you to garner any sympothy from me for their little shows. They put on such good shows, that they have the entire NAMI fooled.

I worked with mentally ill legal offenders when they were in psychiatric hospitals and I have worked in prisons with mentally ill inmates. I then was wrongfully imprisoned, they abruptly stopped my antidepressant and seizure medication, I knew my cat would be starved/tortured, and my property stolen. I lost it and ended up in the mental health unit. I had been a nurse for about 24 years at that point. The conditions were horrendous and the psychologist and psychiatrist did not know what they were doing. There were psychotic patients who needed and wanted medciation and they would not give it to them. They chained people to the floor. They made us beg for toilet paper. We rarely got showers and I observed a nurse treat a black woman in a way that clearly meant she was racist. They even put me in a cell with a violent psychotic woman hoping she would hurt me. I had some psych experience and that saved me. The prisons are full of mentally ill and chemically dependent people who need to be given a life. Some can't live on their own for many reasons and need a more confined place to live, but it does not have to be a hell hole. Some need supervision to take their medications and they do ok. It seems building each one a room to live in and hiring staff to assist them would be cheaper than paying for prisons. Of course I just forgot for a second the whole reason we have so many in the prison system, the prison-industrial complex making money off the misery of others.

I do believe that the death penalty is justified in some cases. However, in the case of the mentally ill it is a complete miscarrage of justices. These are people who clearly do not understand the consequences of their actions and should be placed in treatment programs not executed.

Contributors

Facts about Mental Illness and the Death Penalty

· The State of Texas ranks 47th nationally in terms of per capita spending on mental healthcare, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. It ranks 1st in executions (more than 400 since 1982).

· Around 30 percent of those incarcerated in Texas prison or jails have been clients of the state’s public mental health system. (TX Department of Criminal Justice)

· The U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the death penalty for people with mental retardation, but it has not excluded offenders with severe mental illness from this punishment. Texas law also does not adequately protect those with diminished capacity from a death sentence.

· At least 20 individuals with documented diagnoses of paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other persistent and severe mental illnesses have been executed by the State of Texas. Many had sought treatment before the commission of their crimes, but were denied long-term care.